Automation for goods and services has reached record levels in society. Examples are everywhere from online banking and purchasing to a wide-range of devices and physical appliances that include computing and networking capabilities, which were just wishful dreams only a decade ago. For the most part, these advances have occurred because of breakthroughs in electronics and wireless communications, which have allowed complex processing and network connectivity to be achieved in the smallest of physical devices, such as a smart phone or other handheld computing devices, for relatively small cost and effort.
In addition, many retailers now gear services and promotions toward these devices for purposes of interacting with, attracting, and keeping customers at the retailer.
Many programs such as: promotions, specials, and loyalty servers at retailers (restaurants, etc.) rely on a means of knowing with certainty that a given consumer is at a given location. Consumers can “check-in” with merchants via smart phones but this often requires validation by a human waiter or long delays while Global Positioning Satellite (GPS_solutions narrow in on a reading of sufficient accuracy to determine that the consumer is in fact in the correct location.
Furthermore, additional interaction of the future is going to be driven between the merchant and the consumer in situations where the consumer's mobile device is allowed to perform commercial activities related to the merchant's premises where they are physically located. In such situations, it is necessary for the consumer's mobile device to provide specific location information related to the merchant check-in so that he/she can be uniquely identified within the merchant's system. For example, a diner at a restaurant needs to have his/her phone linked with a specific table where he/she is eating if he/she is going to have information that is specific to his/her own transaction on his/her phone.
In fact, many techniques allow the consumer to check-in to a retailer's place of business. One example is a simple free (honor) check-in where the consumer says he/she is present, but this is not secure or reliable and is prone to fraud. Another means is for the consumer to “bump” his/her mobile device against another mobile device so that accelerometers in both devices can synchronize and establish co-location at a given time. But this approach involves physically assaulting your device, which is an expensive add-on to a typical smart phone and which could cause damage to the smart phone.
Another possibility is scanning of a Quick Response (QR) tag or barcode using the mobile phone's camera but this can be slow and frustrating to consumers. Moreover, pictures of barcodes or QR codes can be captured as electronic images and used for fraudulent check-in when a consumer is not actually present at a retailer's location.
As mentioned above, GPS is another means for self-check-in, but it suffers from local black-spots, slow settling times, and incorrect readings.
Third parties like ShopKick™ provide audio solutions for self-check-in but this solution requires expensive hardware installations to source the background sounds and has limited accuracy (spatial resolution).
Still another self-check-in mechanism uses Near Field Communication (NFC) tags, but this requires specialized NFC hardware in the consumer's smartphone.
One can see that as retailers desire more and more interaction with their consumers, the need for validating a real consumer is present on their premises is of paramount concern. Furthermore, the existing approaches in the industry are: prone to fraud, too expensive, and/or too inaccurate at present for any widespread adoption to take place in the industry.